The collection of stories by Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children, was an extremely moving text for me as a reader. All of the stories worked together as if they were one continuous story, even though they were all separate from each other. When I started reading the text I was not aware that it was a collection, I thought that it was going to be a novel with a continuous plot. Each story felt as if it were trying to convey the same emotions and messages, displaying racism and the reaction by the African-American victims who encounter it.
When I finished the first story I was immediately prepared for a graphic and emotional text, and I was also prepared for the graphic and disturbing racism which would follow throughout the text. The first story, which is an “Autobiographical Sketch” of Wright, told the story of his evolving awareness of what it meant to be an African-American living in a racist society. He recounts an incident from when he was a small child in which he was hit with a broken milk bottle by a white boy and began to bleed. The thing that surprised me most about this story was not the graphic nature of it, but rather the way that his mother reacted when he told her what happened, she stated, “How come yuh didn’t hide?” (4). This caught me off guard because you would expect a parent to be understanding when their child appears badly hurt, but instead she acts as if he were asking for it by not cowering away from the white boys. She, by stating this, is promoting fear and passivity rather then strength and equality.
Another passage that I thought was important to the overall theme of the book was in chapter 4, Fire and Cloud, when Taylor is walking and is reflecting on the white man’s role in the world. He states, “Seems like the white folks jus erbout owns this whole worl! Looks like they done conquered everything. We black folks is jus los in one big white fog.” (130) this quotation demonstrates the African-American sentiment in relation to the attitudes of the racist whites. Taylor sees the inequality and is expressing his anger and confusion toward the issue.
I feel that the 5 stories in the book all work together in order to convey the main theme and sentiment of anger and resentment of the white racists in America. Each of the stories deals with the complications that racism brings to the African-American community by revealing emotions and personal thoughts of the characters when faced with the racism. I feel that these stories gave me a better understanding of the internal emotions and reactions that African-Americans felt when experiencing white ignorance in their daily lives.
